Pure (hardcore) summoning witch guide

I have put together many summoners and I have ended close to the top 10 the past few ladders. My last lvl 65 hardcore summoner died due to a lagspike.

For a Hardcore pure summoner the witch should have the following focuspoints @ the passive tree:

ES%
Summoner nodes
Mana nodes
Increased aura range nodes
Minion instability

ES%
ES is the main focus of my hardcore witches, staying alive is key! The current build has 169% ES plus a large amount of intelligence.

A secret tip from Hellskin: 30 intelligence nodes are more effective than 6% ES nodes. since 30 intelligence gives you 6% es plus a mana boost


Summoner nodes
Its a no brainer that a pure summoner needs to focus on summoner nodes. The order of importance of the boosts are:
1) increased amount of summons
2) increased amount of life
3) increased amount of damage
In some builds, especialy builds that are more hybrid the increased amount of damage passives can be skipped to get other passives instead.

Increased mana & aura range
Most of the damage summons do comes from aura's and support gems. To boost the aura's effectiveness increased range is key. This allows you to move more freely over the map and stay out of harms way when you need to. With the current aura range your summons will be in reach untill the end of your screen.

To be able to run with 5 or 6 active aura's you'll need a very large manapool (around the endgame it should hit somewhere between 800-1000 mana). Increased mana nodes are vital, this includes regen passives.

minion instability
It isn't totaly correct to say that most of the damage minions do come from aura's. There are two diffrent ways minions do damage. First of all: they attack and aura's greatly increase that damage. The second part is minion instability. When minions explode (especialy zombies) they can take down a hole bunch of enemies. They deal a lot of fire damage when they explode. Minion instability is an absolute must for summoner witches.

Skills & Support

minions:

My summoner witch has the following minion skill setups:

zombie / minion life / minion damage / faster attack / added light dmg
skelletons / added chaos damage / minion damage / faster attack
specters / gmp / pierce / added chaos damage


In terms of damage I never really looked into wether minion damage would add more/less damage than added lightning or chaos damage. If somebody has done this please let me know.

aura's

You should have Anger, Hatred and Wrath on at all times. To increase minion damage.

There 2 aura's that I always have on next to those 3 aura's that help me survive: Disipline and Clarity. I do not level up clarity further than lvl 3-5 because the mana reserve scales pretty hard.

There are a few aura's that should be concidered aswell:
Grace & tempest shield. Grace has a flat reserve and with high mana builds you can easely add flat reserves and grace is one of the few that will add an extra advanatage Tempest shield has a relative reserve which will hurt you a bit more but due to the low % it could come in handy when you need some extra block. There are plenty of other aura's that would help out a summoner very much but they usualy have huge relative reserves (40%) and are therefor not usefull.

Reduced mana cost support is needed for all your aura's.

active attack
since the passive tree is based purely on summons you're free to use any attack you want. As long as its usefull with a maximum of 2 support skills and within the amount of mana you're using.

Curses
I'm using elemental weakness, but you can use any curse you want. Temperal chains and enfeeble will give you more survivability. Elemental weakness and vurnability will help you kill faster.

For this setup you need: 5 link armor (zombies) 3x 4 linked (skells, specters, aura's) and a 3 link (aura's)
this means that you have one 3 link item left for your curses/active attack. Pick those skills whisely!

mana management

mana management is very important on a pure summoner build. You'll have a huge manapool and most of the mana will be in use by aura's (up to 80% of your pool). The key to succes is leaving about ~1.5 to 2 times the amount of mana of your highest summoning cast unused by your aura's. For a zombie cast that cost 150 mana you should have 225-300 mana left after all aura's are active. You should regenerate mana quick enough to keep casting your summoner skills.

Item focus

Get high ES items with the right amount of socked.
Get an 20 onyx amulet with extra + all attributes (for all your dex/str skills)
Focus on mana, mana regen, resistance for all other mods.

two passive nodes I must name for alternative builds are:

Body and Soul node (the 20es/20armor group)
Prestidigitation node (extra mana, mana regen and reduced mana cost + faster cast rate)

and the current build has Blast Radius (10% increased effect of area skills). I'm not sure if that still effects aura's, if it doesn't you should drop that skill.

"

Hellskin wrote:

Blast Radius (10% increased effect of area skills). I'm not sure if that still effects aura's, if it doesn't you should drop that skill.

It does. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/29077/page/1

"

vanzi wrote:

"

Hellskin wrote:

Blast Radius (10% increased effect of area skills). I'm not sure if that still effects aura's, if it doesn't you should drop that skill.

It does. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/29077/page/1

Thanks for the heads up but this is pretty old information.

In the previous patch reduced mana cost would effect flat aura reserves. Now you have saperete aura reserve reduction and mana cost reduction only effecting skills.

I feel they might have done the same thing with increased area of effect and aura range.

Wow this got me curious!

My first char is a Witch, which I abandoned at lv 37.
Didn't like how Minions wander around and also the need to recast them so much.
However I'm trying to pick her up again now and will try to deal with the Minion AI, since spellcasting gives me tinitus (same sound over and over again does that).

Couple questions:

What's the best Shield type and shield stats you would inherit to your Minions via Necromantic Aegis?

Can I completely forget about Strnegth and just not use any red skill gems at all?
(Mana Reduce might be the exception here but it's fairly easy on Strength.)

Do we really need to get that many +Number of Minion passives?
I found most of the time 5-10 was all I could get into active combat, the rest was mindlessly wandering about.

Does it make sense to link a Item Rarity/Quantity to Minions, and if so would you rather do it for Zombies or Skeletons?
I have not touched Specters since there was a drawback IIRC that makes all other Minions weaker.

Are Minions survivable enough in Maelström?
What about Conversion Trap there?
And I believe there's a melee skill that also converts slain monsters (could be a Strength gem though)

How much +Item Quantity / Rarity is feasable to stack on a Summoner Witch.
Ideally I'd want them on every item slot.

Thanks in advance

"

Mune wrote:

Loads of questions

1) I'm not a fan of necromantic Aegis, I'm a hardcore player and losing your blockrate is just to dangerous. But if you want a good shield for minions I'd go for one with high blockrate, life regeneration and possibly a damage reflection shield since you'll have a lot of minions that damage will get multiplied by a lot.

To be honest I'm not sure what the base stats and mechanics are for minions. If they have a build in armor multiplier or a base armor rating etc. etc.

My guess would be that ES & Evasion work better than armor because of the mechanics behind it. ES basicly is extra life and evasion rating will always add a percentage of dodging. (the damage on hit shields are ES/evasion, i'd go for that)

Back a few patches ago I used those 12% increased attack speed armguards (on a default build). But they have cut those from the game.

2) You can ignore strenght completely. You can either get str from gear or stop leveling your skills (anger) once you reach your maximum strenght. I do advise you to get that 30 str node close to the witches start since it leads to Minion Instability. But if you don't want that its just fine. Thats one of the good things of PoE. You're free to personalize as much as you want.

3) You'll need a large amount of minions once you reach Chaos. With to few minions chaos creatures will cut down true your army to fast. Only in numbers you'll be able to do enough damage and keep your army alive. You'll get used to the crappy AI and will be able to work with it as soon as you're used to their behaviour. (The AI will still suck though!)

4) You can link em with Rarity and Quantity very well. If you want to go that way, I advise you to both link em up with Rarity and Quantity. Chaos will get (much) harder but if you're all about itemfinding its worth it. Even if you're only doing Fallshire runs.

5) Specters are vital, they are the only way you can get ranged summons and thats why you need them. They can also give you buffs like those comander apes give shared frenzy charges.

6) see awsner 3

7) I hate conversion traps.

8) never tried melee skills on a summoner. Although going melee doesn't really fit with a summoner imo. Summons are a way to keep your character out of harms way. Going melee does the oposite.

9) as much as any witch I suppose.

Thank you so much for all the answers.

"

Mune wrote:

Thank you so much for all the answers.

You are very welcome

As you may or may not be aware, the latest patch kinda broke build linking, so if you could please renew yours or something, I'd be very grateful.

So, here's my build (missing 11 points, be gentle):


So far it seems I'm going in the right way but I fear some of my skills may be wrong (as in maybe not the right path) or even missing (+ %mana and one +30 int maybe?)

I'm probably missing CI and soul siphon aswell, and have a serious doubt about hex master and whispers of doom, dunno if they're worth it at all =D

I think it would be a good build for the described Witch.